© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

We were not surprised when Yudit said that we were using too much soil, and then not enough soil, and then too many seeds, she was relentless in her criticism. We could take no more, we needed a proper day off, we needed to get out of Yesha. We went to Be’er Sheva or Be'er Sheva, we saw it spelt a few different ways.

BE’ER SHEVA ~ BEERSHEBA

Be’er Sheva is the largest city of the Negev desert. As Yudit had not allowed all four of us the same day off to drive to Be’er Sheva in her car, Richard and I went on our own, by bus. Thankfully the bus picked us up a couple of minutes walk from our accommodation. The bus journey passed quickly, and we were soon walking round in the shopping centre. Negev Mall, the biggest shopping centre in Be’er Sheva was great. It was no different to the shopping centres of home. There were large department stores along side smaller independent shops, selling everything from clothing, books, electronic goods, jewellery, and food. There was a popular food court which offered all of the local dishes you could want. We both ate well there, Richard had a Chicken Shawerma Sandwich, which is a warm pitta lined with hummus, marinated char grilled chicken, topped with salad, and a spicy sauce, and I had a Falafel Sandwich, which is also a warm pitta lined with hummus, stuffed with falafel balls, salad, and a spicy sauce, delicious. We are not fans of fast food, but we ate Shawerma and Falafel on more than one occasion during our Israel trip. As we were catering for ourselves at the Moshav, eating only healthy foods, it was nice to eat something different for a change. We must have looked in all of the shops at the shopping centre, but I don’t remember purchasing anything of great importance. It was just so good to be away from the Moshav, and to be wearing clean everyday clothes instead of our work wear. We left the shopping centre and went for a walk in the Old City. The Old City was a rather run down place, although there were some interesting buildings dating from the Ottoman times. Be’er Sheva is home to the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, so there were lots of students walking round the streets. Unfortunately the day passed too quickly, and it was soon time to catch another bus back to the Moshav.

YESHA

When we arrived home, Bob and Marie were interested to hear about our day off. They decided that on their next day off they would also visit the shopping centre in Be’er Sheva. Nothing much happened for a while, the four of us continued working, picking fruit or clearing the earth for planting. Most of the planning for Yudit’s and Moshe’s sons wedding was complete, and we hoped this would be reflected in their moods. It wasn’t. The next big lot of trouble was between Bob and Moshe, one day they had an almighty row. I can’t remember what started it now, something and nothing as usual with Moshe. It ended with Bob and Marie threatening to leave immediately. Yudit got involved, and Bob decided they would stay a little longer. I know that Yudit didn’t want any more volunteers leaving prematurely and complaining to the agency, maybe she should have treated her volunteers better! Every pay day Richard and I would go and see Yudit, we would agree on the hours we had worked, and she would hand over our wages. Bob and Marie did the same. After Bob had threatened to quit there was always a disagreement over the hours we had all worked. Yudit would claim we had worked less hours than we actually had. When she finally agreed that we had worked more hours, she would say she didn’t have enough money to pay us for all of the hours at that time. She claimed that she had withdrawn the exact amount of money from her bank to cover the hours she had thought we had worked, not the hours we had actually worked. Needless to say none of us were impressed with this. She always gave us the rest of the money within a day or two, but every pay day now became another battlefield. On our next day off Richard and I travelled to Be’er Sheva again, we were feeling the need to get away from the Moshav strongly now. A couple of days later the farm had some trouble when Yudit’s eldest son, who rarely worked on the farm, watered all of the seeds we had planted with the wrong hose. Instead of water he had been hosing them with herbicide, they all died. Richard and I had to replant them, which we were pleased about, it was a nice relaxing job in one of the cooler greenhouses. This was not the only problem the family faced, shortly after we had planted hundreds of new seeds and they were beginning to grow, some of the sheeting along the side of the greenhouse got ripped and some birds got in and ate practically all of the sprouting seeds. Yudit and Moshe were livid. I guess they hadn’t heard about Karma! Richard and I didn’t get any more nice jobs, we were given work that was seriously back breaking. Yudit had both of us pulling up weeds in the middle of a field. These weeds had the longest roots I have ever seen, even when we put all of our weight into it we still only managed to get the odd one up. Yudit wouldn’t let us use a shovel or fork to loosen the soil, and she gave us the thinnest gloves imaginable. Our hands were ripped to shreds, bleeding, and very sore. Richard had to have a couple of days off of work, as he had injured his back. He could hardly walk, and spent the days laying on the floor of our bedroom. When he was feeling fit again he went back to work, his hardest job yet. This time Moshe wanted some weeds removing. Richard was sent to work alone in a ‘blackhouse’, a greenhouse covered with thick black cloth, used to grow tropical plants. He was told that he could not leave the greenhouse until Moshe came to get him, and I wasn’t allowed to go and speak to him either. It was over 50c/122f degrees inside when Richard started work in the morning, as the hours passed the temperature became more and more unbearable. Richard was obviously very hot doing this job, so he was drinking even more water than usual. The temperature was always 45c/113f or warmer outside in the fields, and a lot warmer inside the greenhouses, for the duration of our stay on the Moshav, and it was always very humid. Richard had been working in the sweltering conditions of the tropical plant greenhouse for a couple of hours, his clothes were literally dripping wet. He came out to cool down, Moshe saw him and went mad at him, shouting. I was working in a greenhouse opposite Richard, and I could hear Moshe shouting, I came out to see what was happening. Moshe could see that Richard was seriously hot, but he didn’t care. Richard said he needed to go back to our accommodation to clean up, and change into some dry clothes. I have never seen Richard’s skin so red, he had really worked up a sweat, he looked absolutely exhausted. Moshe shouted at Richard to get back in the greenhouse and do some work. Richard began to walk back to our room, and Moshe grabbed a shovel. I called to Richard to let him know, but before I could stop Moshe he threw the shovel at Richard. Luckily for Moshe he missed Richard, who was by now fuming. It took all of my strength to hold Richard back, I told him it wasn’t worth lowering himself to Moshe’s level. Good job we’re lovers not fighters! Although I must say I also felt like giving Moshe a damn good slap! This was the last straw, Richard took my hand and we walked back to our accommodation. Moshe came after us to apologise but we had had enough, we were leaving. Bob and Marie heard what had happened and said they were leaving too. All four of us were annoyed, we had worked so hard for this family and been treated so badly in return. It was not surprising that when Richard went to see Yudit for our wages, she didn’t quibble over the hours we had worked, and miraculously she had enough cash in the house. We wanted to leave as soon as we could, in fact we didn’t even pack most of our clothes, we just grabbed the essentials. By this time Bob had decided to stay, he said he wanted to give Moshe another chance! I think he changed his mind because they didn’t have enough money to leave. We said our good-byes. We walked up the road hoping we hadn’t already missed the bus to Jerusalem. As we stood waiting for the bus we reflected on our Moshav experience. We had lived and worked there for over 2 1/2 months. We had laughed, we cried, we made good friends, and lost a good friend. It was one of the funniest, interesting, and most awful times of our lives, and yet we are both glad we decided to try it. Even though it was not all love and laughter, I don’t think either of us would change a thing, except losing Egar. He was a wonderful character and great friend, who is greatly missed to this day. RIP Egar.

Oceania